Climbing the family tree
30.09.05
There’s something about (my) family history that is, for me, truely fascinating. Hearing stories about relatives past and their conection with great historical events somehow makes both the distant relative and the history more real.
My great, great, Grandaddy fought in the American Civil War, on the confederate side and was still alive when my Grandma was a young girl. She grew up during the depression of the 1930s and has tales to tell of poverty and deprevation.
But she also has tales about how she started going on dates when she was 14, the parents of the boy would pick her up and chaperone her and her date to the movies and home again, a date from an age of what seems like greater social innocence. When she was dating my Grandad they would go to Big band dances at his university and dance to the likes of Glen Miller, live.
It’s the details that make this stories come alive. That make my living relatives seem more like people than well, relatives, that provides a connection across the generation. And it’s the details like this that make me wonder what it is that I’ll have to tell my grandchildren. What stories will I have to share about my younger days and will I be quite so spritely at 89, in spirit and mind, if not in body?
Travelling to: New Jersey
Going: Clubbing
Still shopping: at Macy’s